


Budapest

by igrockspock



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-02
Updated: 2012-06-02
Packaged: 2017-11-06 15:51:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 517
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/420618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/igrockspock/pseuds/igrockspock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Budapest, she knew her enemies and she knew the man fighting beside her.  She doesn't get that certainty often.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Budapest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Yeomanrand](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yeomanrand/gifts), [redbrunja](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redbrunja/gifts).



In Budapest, she knows her enemies, and she knows the man fighting beside her.

They are surrounded, taking shelter behind a burning car that she hopes to god doesn't explode -- at least, not until she lures the Red Room operatives close enough to go down with her. The cobblestones dig into her knees as she kneels on the ground; laundry flaps on the lines overhead, a reminder that moments ago, this had been an ordinary day. Behind them is a dead-end alleyway, no escape for her but no backdoor for her attackers either. They are out numbered and out gunned, and they are probably going to die.

It's a good place for a last stand: a little like her mother land, but not enough to be poetic. She'll go fast, a bullet from a distant assailant. And if it's slow, if they come for her, she'll put her gun to her head. This is not the death she fears, not when every shot she fires claims one of the operatives who trained her. Red Room knew her well: only the ones who taught her could hope to kill her, and they would, but every bullet from her gun was a little less red in her ledger. 

She could die happy here, except she's not alone. The arrows singing through the air remind her that he's here, as if she could ever really forget. They fight back to back; she feels his warmth and the quick, steady release of his muscles behind her, strange because it's become so familiar. If she dies, he does too. And if he survives, he blames himself because he hasn't learned that sentiment is for children. He's fighting to keep her alive, so she has to fight for that too.

"Cover me," she says, and then she's running across the street. The gunman at the corner goes down before he fires a shot. There's an operative waiting for her behind a flowerpot, but Natasha knows better than to be surprised, knows better than to think before she fires. Yelena Drakova falls before her, more red in her ledger, but to keep Clint alive, it doesn't matter.

The fight their way up the block, killing Red Room operatives one by one, stealing guns and ammo when they run out of bullets. At a railroad crossing, they jump on a train bound for Bucharest and freedom, and they sleep in shifts in a boxcar, hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shoulder.

Afterward, she pines for Budapest. Not for the Soviet apartment blocs that ring the suburbs, not for the food that tastes a little like something from her distant past. It's the certainty she craves, the certainty of knowing her enemy and the man at her back and the red flowing bullet by bullet from her ledger.

Years later, when she stands in the rubble of Manhattan, watching alien motorbikes soar out of a portal in the sky, it's hard not to smile when she says, "Budapest all over again."

He doesn't know what she means, but she promises to keep them both alive so she can tell him.


End file.
